Another week, another staged portrait shot composed through the use of natural light, a static spotlighting, and PS magic.

This week, I wanted I shot and processed my work for the +Style It! Shoot It! Share It! community April Challenge. While the overall theme was “What Is Black, White, and _____ All Over?”_ with a technical component of wardrobe or costuming, I chose to take a story that was quite clear and pressing in my mind and adjust the wording slightly to create my own riddle. My riddle goes like this:

“What isn’t always black and white, but stigmatized all over?”

If you were familiar with my Self Portrait Project submission for this week, then you will definitely know the answer to this one.

To be clear, I made 3 different wardrobe changes for this, created all props, and shot this in the location of my garage during the day to allow for more natural light. The three different shots were then brought into PS to be layered together and touched up in the appropriate achromatic scale I wanted for the image.

So, without further ado, here is my shot for Week 17 of this portraiture project!

The rules I have laid out are simple – 1) these portraits can be of myself or another model, but cannot be the same image as my other project; 2) There must be a lighting element – whether my studio lights or a consciously planned shoot using natural lighting from the golden hour, etc. The key being consciously planned – no “on a whim”, point the camera at someone and call it complete. These will be portraits per the definition:

por·trait
/ˈpôrtrət/

Noun

1. A painting, drawing, photograph, or engraving of a person.
2. A representation or impression of someone or something in language or on film.

Synonyms
picture – likeness – portraiture – portrayal – effigy

My goal is to expand my portraiture abilities and processing as well as direction I give others while also working on my creative muscles and my own personal style, which I believe to be shooting what I like to see!

Sometimes, I don’t really want to be known as the chick who does self-portraits that are always glamorous or beautiful. I think it is equally as important to send a message and raise awareness for things.

Social media can be fun and exciting; a place to share lovely images of exotic places and gorgeous sunsets, but it can also be a way to share thoughts, experiences, and things that we feel are important.

While traveling this year, I felt drawn to the homelessness of the places I was at; it became quite real as I walked the streets of Chicago, and my heart sunk after each person I passed and each sign I read.

It became my goal to do a series of images that did not look at beauty; however, look at the realness of the world around us and hopefully raise awareness on issues that we often try to forget.

Had I been in Chicago this week, it would have been a much more impressive shot for the Week 17 +Project 52 B&W theme Night Light, but since it is not, I decided to share it with everyone anyway as just a random share.

Interestingly, when it is 20 degrees outside, The Bean is not such a crowded tourist attraction!

With an incredibly busy work week and the closing out of another +Style It! Shoot It! Share It! challenge, I was not able to really go out at night and find amazing cityscapes and other such “wow” night lights, but when I got to thinking about it, who said night lights had to be anything other than exactly that – night lights!

While on a bit of a nature walk, which is incredibly common, once the cold weather passed, I hopped of the usual trails to lay stomach first in the dirt to get this image.

Again, there is a little in-camera texture from the use of my #lensbaby and the optic plates, but once I brought it home, touched it up a little in LR, I brought it over to PS to enhance the textures, used some layers, filters, masks, and adjustments to produce this final image.

Oddly, the one part that stands out the most is the one thing I did not edit in the slightest – the flower!

I didn’t have much time this month for the hang-outs, silly work/shooting schedules and such, but I still wanted to present my textured images.

This one, my in-camera texture, was taken rather early in the month while I was in Chicago visiting “The Bean”. I took it with my #lensbaby using the creative optic plates to produce bokeh textures and semi-match the pattern of the plant thingy (I have no idea what it is).

I tried it in a chromatic scale, but it really popped more as an achromatic image. 🙂

While coming up with this week’s #SSP , I planned 3 different concepts. I tend to always do this when I hop on any project – whether it be a +Style It! Shoot It! Share It! monthly challenge, a +Selfy Sunday, or a 52- 365-project – I never want to be pinned down to one thing.

In the spirit of this process that I follow, I am sharing with you one of the rejected selfy concepts from yesterday’s shoot.

Not because it wasn’t good, but because it wasn’t exactly what I wanted to say, though, in hindsight, it does say something about how I like to operate; I like to see all the angles and plan for many ways to see/do things.